


stumbling toward veracity

by seejaywrites (thermodynamicActivity)



Series: snakes in the grass [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1970s, Albus Dumbledore Bashing, Asexual Character, First War with Voldemort, Gen, Good Slytherins, Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter), Pureblood Politics (Harry Potter), Veritaserum, it's from a slytherin PoV of course there's gonna be dumbledore bashing, teenagers being teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:55:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23338006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thermodynamicActivity/pseuds/seejaywrites
Summary: you arrive at the designated meeting point for your first order meeting, and find that there are certain unique expectations of you, as a slytherin, and an aspiring member of the order of the phoenix. your name is augustine william greengrass, and an order member is going to question you under veritaserum before they think about inducting you.in retrospect, perhaps you should have stayed home and played chess with your family's house-elf.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black & Remus Lupin
Series: snakes in the grass [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678381
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	1. they who fight monsters

**Author's Note:**

> i deleted and began rewriting "snakes in the water", namely "those of great ambition", and i haven't the slightest idea when i am going to finish that. although i am not nearly as fond of this whole "young order members from slytherin house" fic as i used to be, i continue to love the idea, if not the execution.
> 
> so, who knows? maybe a rewrite will give me inspiration to finish the damn thing,

**november 1977 - augustine greengrass**

the hog’s head is the emptiest you’ve ever seen it, containing only members of the order of the phoenix, and only the few who could make it. all of them sit around, chatting. many of them are old as hell, and you wouldn’t know them if you tripped over them in diagon alley. you’re itching to be on the quidditch pitch right now, quaffle in hand, but that ship sailed after graduation, not until you decide to try out for the wimbourne wasps.

the most recent hogwarts graduates (along with a few seventh years) have vaguely arranged themselves according to house and clique.

the ravenclaws sit at one round table, one with a scorch mark on it, the handiwork of marlene mckinnon. maybe half an hour ago, she sought to show several of her mates her improvement on the intensity of a spell that produces cold fire. she did that and more besides.

you wonder what the barman's reaction was, being that you farrived about twenty minutes after it happened. 

the gryffindors sit at a table by the bar, by far the loudest group in the room. you don't know whether to chalk it up to their general disposition, or the fact that sirius black and petter pettigrew have put away about three pints of bitter each. a few hufflepuffs and a ravenclaw sit with them. most of the hufflepuff order members and several more gryffindor and ravenclaw students sit at the table nearest the door, you guess so that they can greet their friends as soon they show up.

calypso shacklebolt, leo travers, and corona yaxley, three more potential slytherin order members, sit at the other table near the bar. the three of them sit alone, as if slytherin might be a catching disease or something. meanwhile, you stand at the bar, waiting for the food that you, leo, calypso, and corona have ordered. 

pandora mccann, a tiny hufflepuff girl with wispy white-blonde hair, sidles over to you with ghost-like stealth, as she is wont to do. she could probably take a werewolf by surprise.

she stirs her gillywater with the toothpick in the glass, seemingly entranced by the olive at the bottom, and touches your arm as if you’ve been friends for years.

“hello, augustine.”

“evening, pandora,” you reply.

you watch as calypso leaves her seat and walks over to the gryffindor table to greet lily evans. the pair of them launch into an animated conversation, though you cannot hear its contents from where you stand.

several minutes pass while you wait for the cook in the back to finish preparing the meat pies you've ordered. then, without any sort of prelude, pandora gestures with one slender arm to a small cauldron on the bar.

“that’s veritaserum over there,” she tells you, as if it should be the most obvious thing in the world.

of course it is. why wouldn't it be?

then, later on, one of the old guys - elphias, you think - explains its presence, as if you hadn't figured it out already.

“each of the prospective members will be taken upstairs, administered this potion, and asked a few questions. should your answers suffice to show that you bear no ill intentions with your desire to join this organization, you will be inducted into the order immediately.”

calypso, who up until now had begun engaging in some kind of tacit drinking contest with sirius black, lets her glass of firewhiskey and lemonade drop to the table with a thud. she snorts at this, idly yet thoughtfully winding a lock of her coil-curled hair around her finger.

“they make you do this before you joined up, black?”

he shrugs, blowing the hair out of his eyes, and answers honestly.

“nope.”

“figures,” she says, downing the remainder of her drink. “guess it’ll be me, augustine, corona, and leo then.”

black shakes his head at her.

“well, if you have anymore ogden’s, cal, they won’t even need the potion. that's your second.”

she’s an utter lightweight and everyone knows it.

during the last party of your hogwarts career, the infamous one that resulted after slytherin won the house cup, calypso drank three glasses of mead over the course of the evening. you and corona proceeded to down so much absinthe that even the smell of licorice continues to make you queasy.

toward the end of the night, cal threw up all over the silk dress narcissa had worn for the occasion. truly a testament to their friendship that all she did was sigh briefly and help cal to bed. she even spent the remainder of the next day helping her recover from her first ever hangover.

therefore, you’ll be legitimately shocked if calypso isn’t slurring when her turn to be ~~interrogated~~ interviewed comes.

not wanting to seem afraid, you’re the first to volunteer to go upstairs.

hands in your trouser pockets, you glance around, and wonder if you’ve made the right choice. going first, joining the order, all of these could have been mistakes. but, in for a knut, in for a galleon.

the conditions of the the room you enter are dank and deplorable, as befitting the hog’s head, all moth-eaten curtains, ragged sheets, and a single battered chair. you’re afraid to sit down, lest you catch some kind of communicable disease. how long can dragon pox scabs survive once they’ve sloughed off the body? - better ask cal or evans that one, bloody aspiring healers.

eventually, though, forced to choose something, you take the chair. it seems relatively free of excessive filth.

the person interviewing you is pleasant enough, with a heart shaped face, and a few strands of gray weaving through her chestnut-colored ringlet curls. a woman who could easily be someone’s mother. she passes you a goblet of wine, holding it up to you in both hands.

“just drink this, dear,” she instructs you.

you do, letting the sweetness of the liquor linger on your tongue before you swallow. the woman extricates a pair of parchment and a quill from her robes matter-of-factly.

“what is your name?”

“augustine william greengrass.”

she asks you your date of birth, the wood type, length, and core of your wand, the form your patronus takes (you don’t know since you’ve never properly cast one, it's not like you've had dementors gliding past your estate), if you have any family in or allied with the order, and who told you of this organization.

then, she gets down to the real questions.

estimate how many of voldemort’s (she did it! she called the dark lord by his name?) meetings you’ve attended. have you taken the dark mark? are any of your family members death eaters? how good are you at offensive and defensive spells? which are your best? why did you decide, after showing up at so many of voldemort’s (you wince again) rallies, to cross over to this side?

you answer with such comprehensive ease that it surprises you, as if you’re both present and not, some sort of puppet brought to life by a clear little potion, except you can’t feel the tug of any marionette strings.

next door, you hear a man speaking, and a young woman’s familiar voice responding.

“corona angelique yaxley, born on april fifteenth of nineteen-fifty-nine.”

when the woman’s line of questioning is through, she shakes your hand (why do half-bloods touch each other so freely?) and bids you good evening, adding that she thinks you’ll make a fine addition to the order of the phoenix.

calypso stands immediately outside, leaning against the adjacent wall, waiting for her turn to go in.

“cannot for the life of me understand why they’re doing this,” she mutters to you, more annoyed than usual from the firewhiskey in her system.

you do. one can never be too careful, where rebellion against the dark lord is concerned. “they’re trying to keep themselves safe.”

then you tell her to put her wand away before she pokes her eye out. treating this like a duel is no way to make a good first impression.

“but if professor dumbledore himself cleared us to come to this meeting, shouldn’t we already be deemed trustworthy enough?” she counters.

you don’t know how to answer that, quite. maybe he thinks you’re all masters of occlumency or something, that you managed to conceal your true nature from whatever probing he did while you were in his office. you know the feel of legilimency when it hits you, even subtly - you can thank your father and his unique breed of parenting for that one.

“calypso shacklebolt?” the woman in the room calls, softly.

calypso spares you one final glance before she enters and shuts the door behind her.

once you return downstairs, lupin gives you a faintly sympathetic glance, surrounded by his usual group of friends.

“how did it go?” he asks.

elphias passes you a sheet of parchment to sign, a binding magical contract.

“he’s in,” black says to lupin. meanwhile, evans murmurs something about fighting monsters and the abyss, nursing what has to be her fourth glass of mead. black raises an eyebrow.

“i get that you’re plastered, but what in the hell are you talking about?”

“it’s nietzsche, you daft berk,” she replies.


	2. in vino veritas

not wanting to witness the usual bickering that results in evans and black existing in close proximity without potter as a buffer zone, you wind your way back upstairs silently, listening at the door of the room you know your best friend to be in. as it was with you, the questions issue coolly and rapid-fire.

“could you give me your name, please?”

“calypso shacklebolt.”

“your date of birth?”

“january sixteenth, nineteen-fifty-nine.”

“what about the composition of your wand?”

“eleven and three quarter inches, yew and dragon heartstring.”

you decide then that you really hate veritaserum. calypso’s voice, normally so vehement, comes out monotone and dead.

“what form does your patronus take?”

“a dragonfly, when i can cast it.”

“and do you have any family in the order of the phoenix?”

a pause.

“my uncle is friendly with professor dumbledore, but i do not know if he is involved in this organization.”

“who is your uncle, if i may ask?”

“kingsley shacklebolt. he’s an auror at the ministry.”

“noted, then. we’ll check that. how did you become aware of this organization, exactly?”

“i expressed certain inclinations to lily evans, who was later instructed to show me a sign. then i met with professor dumbledore, and was told to come here.”

“that would explain it, then.” another pause. “don’t leave just yet. i have a few more things to ask you, and then you’re free to go.”

“okay.”

at that point, corona exits her respective room, and winks at you. you guess her interview went well. she also elects to join you in your little vigil.

back in calypso’s room, the woman has moved on to the more interesting questions. “true or false, you were once engaged to rabastan lestrange?”  
“true.”

“why?”

“because he asked me? and it would have been a respectable marriage?”

“are you still involved with him?”

“not really. i’m training to be a healer, that comes first.”

“do you still have feelings for him?”

“i never did.”

“is that so?”

“i’ve never had feelings for anyone.”

still in that same dull monotone.

you decide that you really and truly despise veritaserum, and your opinion of this interviewer is plummeting exponentially (you haven’t used that word since 7th year arithmancy) by the second.

“other than him, do you have any friends or family involved in death eater causes, or involved with like-minded individuals?”

the reply doesn’t come. you hear calypso inhale loudly. if you were in the room, you’d be able to see her balling her fists and practically staring holes into the floor.

“miss shacklebolt?”

“i....”

you think of her drunkenly vomiting on narcissa’s new robes again. of the two of them studying for charms together in the common room, and complaining about how boorish hufflepuff boys are. of them - so contrasting in appearance - always sitting side by side in the great hall, from the day they got sorted. of calypso agreeing to be in narcissa’s wedding party without a second thought.

_(”you sure you can make it?"_   
_”i think i can ditch a day of training for this. all grown up, you are.”)_

“please answer, if you can,” the woman says, more adamantly now. “it’s important that we know the enemy we’re facing, as i’m sure you understand.”

a brazen, stupid idea occurs to you. open the door, cast a memory charm on calypso to make her forget who narcissa is set to marry, and cast a memory charm on the interviewer to make her forget what you just did. the chances of it succeeding are roughly the chances of peter pettigrew ever losing his virginity - ten million to one.

“malfoy. lucius malfoy,” calypso finally grits out. "i believe that he is a death eater."

“thank you very much. i appreciate your cooperation.”

you let out a sigh on cal’s behalf that the woman doesn’t press calypso further, because you’re not quite sure what happens to an individual that consciously resists veritaserum, and you’re sure it’s nothing good.

that’s when the questions about her magical aptitude start. offensive spells, and defensive spells.

“i suppose my best defensive spell is echebe kpuchie,” calypso answers.

“e-what?”

“it’s similar to a shield charm, but usually cast wandlessly.”

“right, then.”

you don’t get that kind of spellwork either, how any of it can be performed without any channeling device. every time you’ve asked calypso, she’s talked about imperialism, colonization, and necessity of improvisation, how limited the west is with its dependence on wand-generated magic, and consequently bored you half to death, so you still have no idea how it works.

therefore you don’t begrudge the interviewer any confusion.

“i suppose i’ll just have to take your word for it won’t i, dear?” she asks briskly and patronizingly. “your best offensive spell, then?”

“everything i say will be kept in confidence, yes?”

“that is correct.”

“even if what i tell you may imply a breach of the law on my part?”

merlin’s beard, this is going to be good. you and corona exchange significant glances.

“yes, calypso. i am under an unbreakable vow to report your responses to no one but albus dumbledore himself.”

she doesn’t bother to point out that the headmaster could subsequently choose to turn calypso in.

“alright so,” she begins. “if you consider it to be an offensive spell, i believe my best is fiendfyre."

fiendfyre being against the law because the incantation required to put out the resultant conflagration is so difficult to master. 

you already knew that particular fact, but the woman gasps as if she’s been physically hit with the latter. you hear something tinkle and smash and figure that she must have knocked over the goblet. you feel like elaborating that cal would never use that spell except under the most dire of circumstances, and really only learned it in an attempt to master the countercurse.

once the interviewer recovers, though, she manages a small, timid, “i see.”

“you did ask, after all,” calypso notes, the faintest thread of sarcasm woven into her monotone.

evidently she didn’t miss the woman’s condescension.

the interviewer sighs, and shuffles her parchment.

“last question, i promise.” she says. “given your hogwarts house, and all your ties to known death eaters and sympathizers, why do you wish to join the order of the phoenix?”

her answer is far more nuanced than yours was, which basically boiled down to, “i think voldemort’s a tosser, that his followers are morons, and i have muggleborn friends.”

she talks about being a healer-in-training, how one of the main tenets of healing is “first, do no harm,” and that being a death eater would flagrantly violate that statement. she mentions that her status in the muggle world is roughly comparable to that of a muggleborn on this side, endless prejudice and danger, meaning that she can empathize with a cause actively trying to fight those who would perpetuate such conditions.

you and corona nod at each other.

this is an argument you have heard so often that you could recite it verbatim, with all of calypso’s inflections and everything.

“it’s basically the same thing. muggles and wizards just draw discrimination down different lines.”

a few moments of silence, and then the sound of a chair skidding across the floor as someone rises from it.

“well, that concludes our interview, calypso,” the woman declares. “have a good evening.”

she doesn’t get a _“i think you’d be a good fit for the order”_ like you did, but after having nearly scared the interviewer to death, you’d be surprised if she had.

calypso, for her part, looks unsurprised to see you and corona standing there, giving you both a rueful grin.

“did i do good, augustine?”

you roll your eyes and refuse to dignify that with a response.

more seriously, she asks, “is leo out yet?”

“i haven’t seen him,” corona responds. you confirm that you haven’t either. however, he only went in after corona left, so it’ll be a while yet.

tossing back the plait of her dark hair, she comments that she could use a drink, and beckons the two of you to follow her downstairs. you return to the table where black, evans, lupin, and pandora sit. well, pandora is more asleep than anything else.

elphias doge seems rather wary as he comes up to your table. while he asks corona to sign the parchment, he does not extend the same question to calypso.

black notices this, quirking an eyebrow, ordering a gillywater that he hands to her.

“so who’d you kill?”

she thanks him, and downs the drink in one fluid motion. “nobody, unfortunately.”

“really, now?” black claps her on the back, and you grin into your drink at her scowl. “i’m proud of you. what happened, then?”

she tells the tale of her interview to everyone present at the table, all of whom give her their condolences once she concludes it. yeah, it’ll probably go down as a legend.

“look on the bright side, you’re not gonna end up getting killed like the rest of us,” black comments.

“a right ray of sunshine aren’t you?” corona asks.

lupin shakes his head gently, refusing to interfere, evidently accustomed to black’s uniquely grating personality.

you suggest a game of chess to pass the time until leo comes out. after you lose the first match narrowly, you have to admit that the man has a keen mind for strategy, at least compared to his mates.

then, maybe half an hour later, dumbledore makes his grand appearance, and your games grind to a halt. the entire room goes silent. sirius pauses mid-drink and nearly chokes.

as much as everyone in your house mocked this man whenever he was out of earshot, he does have a commanding presence.

“i would be honored to extend my warmest welcome to the four newest members of the order of the phoenix,” he announces. “and to also mention how proud i am of them for choosing to do what is right, rather than what is easy, particularly given their house affiliations.”

leo beams at that. _“dumbledore’s proud of me?”_ he mouths.

corona very nearly bursts out laughing.

professor dumbledore says a few more words, but you’re not really paying attention anymore. this guy can get almost as boring as professor binns when he gets going. once he’s finished addressing the entire group, and stressing the importance of unity or whatever, he breaks off to speak with a few order members that you and corona have privately christened “those ancient fucks”.

they’re over fifty, therefore they’re old.

you don’t notice when he makes his way over to where you and black are arguing about whose bloodline is more inbred (it’s definitely his) - while your friends attempt to drink themselves apathetic - until professor dumbledore asks, in a measured, polite tone, “miss shacklebolt, mr. travers, would you two please sign this?”

he goes on, “you should be aware that this is a binding magical contract, of course, and that it will prevent you from being able to give certain specific information about the order to anyone who has not been inducted.”

_hey, why didn’t doge give you that speech?_ you kind of want to know.

you'd assumed something of the sort anyway, but still.

leo seems so nervous at being singled out by this man that he nearly drops his quill in the process of adding his signature to the parchment.

meanwhile, calypso regards the headmaster carefully, pointing at herself with a frown.

“me?”

“yes, you, miss shacklebolt,” he assures her. “unless. of course, i’m mistaken, and you possess an identical twin, similarly to the prewett brothers, over there.”

calypso signs the parchment without a word.

“he must be getting old,” she whispers when he’s out of earshot. “i am fairly sure i gave the worst interview in the world.”

“nah, he saw something in you,” black says. “as to what, i have no clue.”

“you have a lot of slytherin friends,” corona reminds her. “probably the same reason they let me in. they think you’ll spy for them.”

you don’t bother to tell corona that calypso isn’t not the spying sort.

“could be that you’re training to be a healer,” evans chimes in. “merlin knows we need more of those.”

lupin sips his (non-alcoholic) drink quietly, drumming his fingertips against the table. his hands are scarred.

“maybe he put you in because it’d be tactically dangerous to do anything else,” he says finally. “if you stayed neutral, the other side would try to recruit you. and if you joined the other side, then they’d be that much more powerful. at least this way, he can keep an eye on you.”

though you have no particular love for anyone in his friend group, you do have to concede this fact.

“lupin’s probably right,” you respond.

**Author's Note:**

> so, let me know what you think so far?


End file.
